A Mocha with Mary Connealy - Plus Giveaway!

UPDATE Tuesday 5/8/12 9:39 pm WINNER!

My apologies! I had it in my head that tonight was the drawing, not Sunday. Some of you may have been checking back and wondering if I ever follow up on giveaways! Please forgive me! Here is the winner:

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Here are your random numbers:
13
Timestamp: 2012-05-09 02:31:00 UTC
Congratulations to Marissa! Email me your address, Marissa, and I'll send the book your way. Thanks to all of you for making this such a fun time and a special thanks to Mary Connealy!

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 Tiny House Overflowing with Kids. . .and Love!
by Mary Connealy

I grew up in a two bedroom farmhouse with seven brothers and sisters (later on, after the sixth child was born, we did add on and have three bedrooms—yippee!). For a while I slept on a couch in a room we called 'the middle room'. So maybe it had four bedrooms, but my room was a thoroughfare, which may explain my insomnia. I stayed up late as a child. I remember listening to Johnny Carson in the living room when my dad would stay up to watch the monologue.

My dad was a dairy farmer. My mom was a stay-at-home mom who later went to work when my youngest brother was about four.

Simply put, we were poor. Dirt poor. But maybe poor isn't the right word. We had no money. Zero money. But we were never hungry. We weren't stuffed, exactly, but not hungry, either. Mom and Grandma (who lived two miles away) both gardened. We had chickens and milk cows. So we didn't go without food. We wore hand-me-downs and the neighbors gave us old clothes. My grandma always had us over for a delicious Sunday dinner, the old-fashioned kind of meal with roast beef and mashed potatoes and gravy and plenty of everything. But Grandma was working on the farm, too; she was kind of the boss of the operation.

We were born, eight kids, in eleven years and we lived across the road from a family of seven, four of whom were close in age to us. We practically lived in each other's houses. We all went to a one-room country schoolhouse. I started first grade with four kids, by the time I graduated from eight grade and got to go to town school for high school, I was alone in my grade.

We played outside, winter and summer. Where are you going to play inside in a house that tiny? Climbing haystacks and running through the woods, swinging on a rope in the hay mow, riding horses. We had one horse, our neighbors had two.

My family had one bike for eight kids. I always had a roommate (except for those blissful years in the 'middle room'). At one point there were four girls in one small bedroom. But it didn't matter because we weren't ever in there except to sleep.

No air conditioning. Come to think, very little heat. We had two oil-burning stoves for the whole house. We had a bathroom in our basement, a cold, rodent-infested basement. EEK!

Our bathtub was a tin tub mom would haul in from the small entry room every Saturday night.

You know, we weren't that different from a lot of people, honestly. We had a neighbor that still had an outhouse until about the time I was full grown.

I remember my dad coming home from an auction once with four beds. That must've been when we added on. He'd bought four beds for five dollars. Five dollars TOTAL, not five dollars each.

I give you this background because there was nothing about our growing-up years that was 'enriched' in the way people think of it today. No passes to the Children's Museum. No children's theater. No travel.

No Sesame Street. But my parents were special people. Different people in some really wonderful and hard to describe ways.

My dad read to us, doing all the voices in funny kids' books. He made us help around the farm, including milking cows. There's a hard way to make a living, let me tell you!

We went to the library constantly and checked out stacks of books. Reading was a fundamental part of our lives. Church was every Sunday, no exceptions.

My parents were mild-mannered, though mom could scold, for a fact. But they were mostly so kind to us. They had a knack for acting like they were so lucky to have us. Can you image what a rabble we were? All those kids in that tiny house with no money? But I remember Mom smiling at me one time and saying, "The man who marries you is going to be so lucky."

But one thing my parents have that was different, besides their faith and kindness was their education. They'd met at college and married. I think my family grew up with this sort of … mythology about education. Dad went to college only because he unexpectedly got a scholarship. He was planning to stay home and farm. When the scholarship money wasn't enough, instead of going home, he enlisted in ROTC. And during his college years he met my mom.

They both really believed in education. They never asked us IF we were going to college, they asked us WHERE we were going to college.

So out of this tiny house, overflowing with eight children, came my family of whom I am very proud.

Between us we have eight Bachelor's degrees. Five Masters Degrees. One doctoral degree, two Divinity degrees and one published author—me.

I have this image that makes me smile of all these educated people just roaring out of this little, run-down farmhouse.

All this amounts to is little glimpse into the fires that forged me. Education, books, enforced togetherness, kindness, love and faith.

I tried to raise my own kids the same way. And I try to catch those things in my books.

My most recent release, In Too Deep, began in book one of the Kincaid Brides Series—Out of Control—with two women and two babies in a run-down farm house. Of course heroes came along and with them comes love and BIGGER HOUSES. So despite my contentment with my roots, I admit it would've been nice not to share a room with three other sisters.

But when I write about crowded homes with few luxuries, I think I can bring some honestly to the story.

In Too Deep

Ethan Kincaid, the shallow charmer, agrees to a marriage of convenience with the same casual disregard he gives every decision.

Audra Gilliland, the fragile, young mother of two, accepts his proposal because she wants to stop being a burden to her newly married step-daughter.

Ethan doesn't expect Audra to touch him deeply and when she begins to is terrified of the pain he's felt before when his weakness nearly killed his little brother. Audra has been cared for all her life by one man or another and they've done a poor job of it. Now she's going to stand up for herself and make her own decisions and her new husband had better agree to let her, or get out of her way.

Can Ethan face the demons of his own failure? Can Audra stand on her own two feet? And can God give them courage to risk true love?


ABOUT MARY
Mary Connealy writes romantic comedy with cowboys. She is a Carol Award winner, and a Rita and Christy and Inspirational Reader's Choice finalist. She is the author of bestselling Kincaid Brides Series: Out of Control, In Too Deep, Over the Edge, Lassoed in Texas Trilogy, Montana Marriages Trilogy and Sophie's Daughters Trilogy. She also wrote Ten Plagues—a romantic thriller, and The Historical Society Murders—three cozy mysteries, under the name Mary Nealy.
Mary is married to a Nebraska rancher and has four grown daughters and two spectacular grandchildren.


Thanks so much, Mary! I loved hearing about your growing-up years!

I reviewed In Too Deep in February; you can read that review here.

GIVEAWAY!
I'm giving away a copy of this book to one of you! Just leave a comment on this post by 8:00 pm CDT Sunday (5/6/12) and I will randomly draw a winner. US Residents only please.